“When we are surrounded by beauty,” Thomas Aquinas College’s late president Dr. Thomas E. Dillon often remarked, “our minds are better disposed to contemplate the true and the good.” In that spirit alumnus and composer David Isaac (’05) cites as his motivation “bringing beauty to my audiences” through music that moves both the heart and the mind.

On the weekend of May 19-20, the Southern Arizona Symphony Orchestra will open its end-of-the-season concert with the premier of Mr. Isaac’s “Patriotic Overture” at the DesertView Performing Arts Center in SaddleBrooke, Ariz. Tickets are available online.